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Being HoD and making change: summary
In LS the HoD was in post for a while before the project and was promoted to assistant headteacher in another school when the project finished. In SP the HoD was fairly new, and in the final project year left the school due to restructuring to go elsewhere. An existing teacher took over as HoD for the final year. In FH the HoD who started the project left after one year, and the second-in-department, who had been at the school for one year, took over. All HoDs had strong personal agendas to implement changes that would promote social justice.
Key issues for all HoDs were:
- they all had strong visions of the kind of mathematics they wanted students to be learning
- they all wanted a strong shared ethos, but in each school there were one or two who disagreed, and one or two (not necessarily the same people) who were somewhat excluded because of being part-time, or mainly teaching a different subject
- all were concerned about those who had fixed views about the low ability of some students
- there were differences in management style, some being leaders and some being listeners, but none of them used 'command and checkup' management processes, and all tried to avoid this being done to the team by others.
- they all felt it was important to be able to make assumptions about a shared basis for discussions, within a framework of expectations.
For the researchers there were obvious questions about how newcomers are inducted into the ethos and practices, especially if these are different to those in many mathematics departments. We also identified two further groups of teachers in all schools for whom these assumptions are less obvious, or not shared. There are the self-marginalised teachers who resist change and hold strong contradictory views, and systemically-marginalised teachers such as those who are part-time, or who have responsibilities that keep them away from informal contact with the core team, or who also teach in another curriculum area. One such teacher said to us 'I don't know what I am supposed to think'. These groups can overlap - someone can self-marginalise because of pressures elsewhere. The second group includes people whose teaching methods in other areas match what is being developed in mathematics, but who are not around enough to be part of the 'how do we do this in maths?' discussions. In the lesson studies the researchers give evidence of the effects of marginalisation on students' learning opportunities.
HoDs had been influenced from a range of directions including Guy Claxton's ideas on improving learning potential, Mike Ollerton's ideas on mixed ability teaching, Malcolm Swan's work on improving mathematics learning, and many others.
